« Views of the Frigorífico Puerto Bories
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Introduction
The small community of Puerto Bories lies in the region of Última Esperanza (Chile), near the southern end of the Andes range: it is located 4 miles from Puerto Natales, and some 150 miles north of Punta Arenas. After sheep-ranching reached this region in the last decade of the 19th century, a fat-rendering works was built here, on the shore of Last Hope Sound. The Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego (SETF) purchased these lands in 1905, and proceeded to construct a large Frigorífico (freezer works) on the same site: this was fully operational by 1915.
The photograph album featured here dates from about 1918. A thorough work of industrial documentation, it shows the various sections of the plant and illustrates their respective procedures, from the arrival of animals "on the hoof" to the shipment of finished products. The author, Carlos Foresti, is known to have produced other albums about Patagonia.
It is an elegant book, bound in leather, with "gold" lettering; the photographs are generally of good quality, many of them large. The copy used to create this web-publication originally belonged to a former SETF employee, Nicolás Fadič Rendič. Many thanks to Juan and Sergio Mac-Lean for allowing its reproduction.
Technical note: Due to the book's large format, the full-page illustrations had to be copied photographically: this has caused some unevenness. This problem did not affect the individual images, which were scanned: to view them at their best, simply click the respective region or follow the links at the foot of each page.
Duncan Campbell
February 2005